With the advent of the Internet, a seemingly limitless variety of content may be provided to people of varying ages, preferences, and sensibilities. Some content may be more appropriate for some individuals and groups than for others. For instance, violent or pornographic content is typically deemed inappropriate for children. Providing audience-appropriate content is desirable because it generally maximizes benefits and minimizes burdens for both the content provider and the audience. For instance, an audience-appropriate and relevant ad is more likely to generate a sale than an offensive and irrelevant one.
Accordingly, ads and other content are often targeted to specific audiences that may have an interest in the content. For instance, ads directed to males may be displayed during nationally televised football events because they draw large numbers of male viewers. Similarly, an ad for an airline may be displayed at an Internet search engine site when a user submits a query including the word “plane.”
However, providing ads and other documents based on user-related content does not ensure the propriety of that content for a particular audience. For instance, a beer advertisement may not be appropriate on a website for recovering alcoholics, even though the ad and the content of the website are related by subject matter.
One method of matching appropriate content to an audience is to manually review the content before distributing it to the audience. However, there are problems associated with manual review. For example, one significant drawback of manual rating systems and methods is the time and expense involved in reviewing the content.
These and other drawbacks exist with current systems and methods.